Analysis of Turkish high-school physics-examination questions according to Bloom’s taxonomy

Education is a process that aims at changing an individual’s behaviour. Some of the important aims of science education are to provide students with lasting learning of scientific concepts, and improve their thinking skills (Saunders & Shepardon, 1987). Planning, teaching, and assessment stages have been used in order to achieve these aims. Assessment is a crucial stage in determining whether students’ conceptual development has reached higher order cognitive skills (HOCS) or not.

Assessment aims to make judgements and decisions about the effectiveness of students and teachers (Rosenshine, 1971). In this process, first, it is necessary to test the targeted behaviour by using measurement tools that have high validity and reliability. If we are not clear about the expected behaviour for the students to reach, we can not measure the targeted behaviour. Consequently, the first step in any assessment process is to define students’ behavioural changes. Therefore, a comparison should be made between expected and observed outcomes. For this, written examinations, multiple-choice tests, and oral examinations can be used. While written and multiple-choice tests are accepted as quantitative measurement tools, oral examinations are known as qualitative tools (Cohen & Manion, 1998). Physics teachers usually apply written exams to find out whether students learn the content and scientific facts of physics. To assess physics teaching at all types of high school, it is important to determine the quality of questions asked at school exams.

Physics is known as a difficult lesson to comprehend by most students. As a result, success of students is rather low on physics questions asked in high school and OSS (Çepni&Azar, 1998; Çepni, Özsevgeç & Gökdere, 2003 ). Because physics teachers think that physics is difficult to understand as a lesson, they generally ask lower-order and superficial questions. In fact, according to studies related with the subject, questions consist of 80 per cent reminding(Karamustafaoğlu, Sevim, Karamustafaoğlu & Çepni, 2003; Köse, 1999; Crocks, 1998; Gall, 1984). Lower-order questions neither develop intelligence capacity of students nor lead them learning parrot fashion. The students attending a high school, as a result of not meeting questions which need to be thought (thinking with possibilities, thinking imaginably, and correlational thinking), often could not answer them in OSS. Physics questions asked are expresed on the basis of analysis, problem solving on commentary and they can be solved by students who can understand events conceptionally, think analytically and have the ability to solve problems and practicing.

If our aim is to make students solve higher-order physics questions in OSS and encourage them to improve their system of thinking, We should provide them with appropriate education. The consideration made according to the level of students at schools brings out their real mental skills.

The most common criteria used when analysing the instructional objectives and questions is Bloom Taxonomy (BT), developed by Benjamin Bloom and known by his name. BT asserts to prepare questions for measuring thinking skills of students ( Çepni, 2003; Çepni at al., 2007).

The main purpose for determining success of students has to be determining and developing their level of cognitive progress by asking well prepared questions. According to BT, cognitive levels are arranged in order, from simple to complex: knowledge level, comprehension level, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation level. As stated by Çepni (2003) and Çepni&Azar(1998), students might be at difference cognitive levels. The quality of the questions asked on exams contributes to creativeness of students and their criticism ability.

According to Çepni et al. (2003 and 2007), existing teachers do not make appropiriate determinations on mental developmental characteristics of students. Therefore, many successful students at high school fail on OSS. According to Azar (1998), the teachers in secondary schools do not have enough experience of asking questions by considering BT. Moreover, the cognitive levels of physics questions on OSS are needed to be investigated.

HOCS items are defined as quantitative problems or qualitative conceptual questions, unfamiliar to the students, requirine for their solution more than knowledge and application of known algorithms… Such an application may further require (partially or fully) the abilities of reasoning, decision-making, analysis, synthesis, and critical thinking (Zoller & Tsaparlis, 1997). In order to improve the quality of teaching, it is widely believed that one must be able to set good/proper questions. Teachers who set HOCS questions foster interaction between themselves and their students (Brualdi, 1998). The purpose of this study was to analyse and compare the physics questions asked in exams at different schools in a province of Turkey, in terms of the levels of cognitive domain of BT. This Taxonomy has been used mostly in designing questions which help teachers to measure students’ thinking abilities (Colletta & Chiappetta, 1989).